Tell Me Again - Why Do They Hate Us?

nytimes.com | Feb. 14, 2008

The most famous journalist you may never have heard of is Sami al-Hajj, an Al Jazeera cameraman who is on a hunger strike to protest abuse during more than six years in a Kafkaesque prison system.

Mr. Hajj’s fortitude has turned him into a household name in the Arab world, and his story is sowing anger at the authorities holding him without trial.

  NYT

Al Jazeera | 11 Jan 2016

When it was time to go to university, I left home [in Sudan] and headed for India, where I spent five years studying political science and sociology. But I always maintained my passion for the media.

[...]

It was while I was [in the United Arab Emirates] that I heard about a new channel that was being set up in Qatar – Al Jazeera. I felt compelled to join.

When I was eventually taken on, it was with the intention that I would become the channel's Chechnya correspondent. My wife is from the region and I had a deep interest in it.

But then 9/11 happened and everything changed.

  Sami al-Hajj: Al Jazeera

Al-Hajj worked as a cameraman for Al-Jazeera. In October of 2001, his media crew began covering Taliban activity, regularly crossing back and forth between Afghanistan and Pakistan. One day, December 15, 2001, he was stopped at the border going back into Pakistan.

The Taliban had been pushed out of Kandahar and Al Jazeera wanted us to report on life in the city after their departure. I was worried about the route in, but felt relieved when we arrived at the border crossing and found it full of journalists. There must have been about 70 of us, from all over the world.

But they wouldn't let me cross.

I knew the border guard who stopped me. They had a paper, he said, directing them to arrest "Sami, the Al Jazeera cameraman".

[...]

I spent the night in the border guard's office. The next day, he telephoned [an] intelligence officer. Either come and take him, or I'll let him go, I heard him say. Thirty minutes later, the intelligence officer arrived. I was taken to their office and arrested.

[...]

A case of mistaken identity, they assured me. I was just waiting to be released.

[...]

But the hours turned into days – I would spend 23 there in total.

[...]

Then, one night, I was moved.

I was taken to the airport with a group of Arabs. There were around 25 to 30 of us. We were handed over to American soldiers. Bags were placed over our heads and we were handcuffed in a human chain. Then we were loaded into a military cargo plane. That flight felt like something from a horror film. We were beaten randomly. By the time we landed, our feet were numb from the cold, our bodies frozen stiff.

They were at Bagram, a US base.

They began to question me about Osama bin Laden. They thought I'd interviewed him for a report that had been broadcast on Al Jazeera some weeks earlier. They wanted to know what I knew of his whereabouts.

Of course, they were mistaken. I had never met nor interviewed Bin Laden. But their questioning revealed that, even if this was a case of mistaken identity, they were in no doubt as to the fact that I was a journalist.

[...]

After 17 days in Bagram, I was transferred to Kandahar.

The conditions were better there.

[...]

I was questioned about Al Jazeera. They again acknowledged that I wasn't the person they had been looking for. But still I wasn't released.

[...]

After five months, I was among the last group of prisoners from Kandahar to be sent to Guantanamo.

[...]

The process of breaking us down began immediately. And it never stopped.

[...]

[A]fter 30 days on hunger strike, the force-feeding would begin. It is hard to convey just how traumatic this is. It became a form of torture in itself.

They would tie us up by our hands and our legs and then force a tube up our nose. Most of the time, the fluid would enter our lungs. We'd be coughing and choking as our lungs filled with liquid. Often, they'd over-feed us so that we vomited. But even as we threw up, they'd keep on going. The vomit would dry on our faces and bodies. We weren't allowed to clean it away so the smell became unbearable. And they'd use the same tube for multiple prisoners without cleaning it.

Although a federal judge ordered the videos of these "feedings" to be released in October 2014, they still have not been seen by the US public. The Obama administration filed an appeal, of course. Some members of Congress "demanded" to see the videos.

The administration was again ordered to release videos (redacted, of course) in 2015. At that time, the Navy dropped a case it had pending against a Navy nurse who had refused to do the "feeding." (He had been removed from his nursing duties.) But no videos, redacted or otherwise, were released.

Finally, in August last year, the government released to the court 8 redacted videos (out of more than 30 that were made and requested) that had been ordered released a year earlier. At some point, it provided the remainder "sanitized" videos to the court.

Lawyers for a since-released detainee who have asked for the public release of the videos are still at it without success. Attorneys in the case have indeed seen the tapes but are barred from discussing them.

It's not clear to me whether prisoners are still being force fed, but they were as of September 2015, so I suspect they still are.

In a 22 July [2015] filing, the then commander at the Guantánamo detention facility said that if the tapes were released, the information on them could “be provided to detainees, allowing them to manipulate the system, disrupt good order and discipline within the camps, and enable them to test, undermine and then threaten physical and personnel security”.

  Guardian

The DOJ is still dragging the judge's order through appeals with no end in sight.

If the government has retained these videos but deems them sufficiently disturbing and incriminating that it fights their release, we can only imagine what the 90-some tapes of "interrogations" officials destroyed rather than turn over must have shown.

Sami al-Hajj was released from Guantánamo May 1, 2008, after 480 days on hunger strike.

Very few detainee cases have ever gone to trial. And today, there are still innocent people – people who have been told that they pose no threat – in Guantanamo.

It is an inhumane place; an insult to humanity.

  SAmi al-Hajj: Al Jazeera, November 2016